Earth Science Projects, Lesson Plans and Experiments

The Ecosystem

"At the beginning of the school year, I introduce food chains to the students by having everyone, including myself, recite 'I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.' We all have a good time with that humorous poem. Now that the class is exploring tropical rain forests, our poems have become a little more serious and mysterious like this one that I created in direct connection to one of the pages in our science textbook. It's called 'Eek!

Eek! The Ecosystem!'

The plants eat the sunshine and the water,
The beetle dines on leaves beside her daughter,
The furry spider eats both insects like she ought to,
A boa swallows them in one gulp for nutrients and water,
And as the chubby snake rests, a hawk awaits the slaughter.

Moral

A rain forest rule that helps species survive:
It's better to pray to eat prey than to pray while being eaten alive.

One thing I remind students is that humans are not in any other animal's food chain. We just have to be careful not to whet a hungry animal's appetite."
Submitted by: Michael Szewczyk Cooper198@email-removed , a fourth grade teacher at Berkeley Terrace School in Irvington, New Jersey. This tip was published in the NEA's Weekly Tip Newsletter.

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